Faith and palliative care: a partnership of care in low- and middle-income countries

ABSTRACT

The provision of holistic palliative care has been identified by WHO as a human right, important for all people, at all ages, with all life-limiting illnesses. When faced with death and dying, issues of meaning and relationships with others, the world, and with the sacred are intensified even more in communities where faith and spiritual beliefs have a significant place. Being able to understand the significance of dying and interpreting the experience and period of living with life-limiting illness, presents an important challenge for palliative care. This article sets out the contribution that faith communities have made in understanding the significance of spiritual issues in health and in delivering palliative care in lower to middle-income contexts where palliative care has been prioritised.     

Systematic Interpretation and the Re-systematization of Law: The Problem,Co-requisites,a Solution,Use

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique - A renewed search for legal certainty is a reaction to the preponderance of judge made law, which...     

论警察的公众信任--以中国为例

本研究评估了中国公民对警察的信任程度,并探讨了影响公众对警察信任程度的因素。就目前来看,针对中国公民对待警察的态度进行的实证研究寥寥无几。本研究以冲突理论为理论框架,通过收集中国8个城市的访谈数据,检验了性别、年龄、教育程度、收入、就业、感知政治影响力等冲突变量以及相关控制变量对中国警察公信力的影响。结果表明,这些变量对于中国公民对待警察的态度的解释力有限。青年以及政治权力较低的中国公民往往对警察的信任度较低。此外,中国公民对警察的态度还受到公共安全满意度、政府处理犯罪的能力、生活质量和政府官员腐败度的影响。同时本文也对未来研究的意义进行了讨论。     

The identification of individuals by observational gait analysis using closed circuit television footage

This study investigated the ability of individuals with experience in gait analysis to identify people by observing features of gait recorded by closed circuit television cameras (CCTV). Seven experienced analysts each viewed five samples of footage. Each sample showed a “target walker” and five “suspect walkers.” The task of the experienced analysts was to determine which, if any, of the “suspect walkers” was the “target walker.” All of the participant “walkers” wore identical loose fitting clothing to mask anatomical and body contour features, and balaclavas to obscure facial features. The overall results showed that the experienced analysts made a correct decision in 124 of 175 cases (71%), significantly better than would have been expected to have occurred by chance (p < 0.05). A significant variation in correct decisions (p < 0.05) was shown to occur between the various angles from which the footage was recorded, footage recorded in the saggital plane showing the highest number of correct decisions. Significantly more correct decisions (p < 0.05) were also shown to occur when the footage of the “target walker” and that of the “suspect walker” were taken from the same angle. The results suggest that individuals with experience in gait analysis perform well in the comparative identification of suspects from CCTV footage, and therefore do have a role to play as expert witnesses in this field.     

Balancing domestic regulation and trade liberalisation under the GATS: universal access issues in South Africa's telecoms sector

The service sector increasingly has become the cornerstone of a great number of economies in both the developed and developing world. The main barrier to trade in services is the imposition of domestic regulations which are aimed at ensuring the affordability, availability and efficiency of services. Such domestic regulations are important for services and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) consequently recognises the right of countries to regulate in order to achieve these goals. The GATS, however, also seeks to discipline such regulations to ensure that they do not hinder trade in services. This article seeks to assess these seemingly competing interests in the context of South Africa's history and its burgeoning telecommunications sector.     

Complementarity effect in the innovation strategy: internal R&D and acquisition of capital with embodied technology

The Journal of Technology Transfer - For scale-intensive industries and science-based industries in Germany, we investigate the question whether firms combining internal R&amp;D and acquisition...     

Politician preferences, law-abiding lobbyists and caps on political contributions

The effect of a contribution cap is analyzed in a political lobbying game where the politician has a policy preference. In contrast to the previous literature without politician policy preferences, more restrictive binding caps always reduce expected aggregate contributions. However the initial imposition of a cap increases contributions if the politician mildly favors the low-valuation lobbyist’s policy. The introduction of policy preferences permits analysis of monied interests’ policy influence. A more restrictive cap makes it more likely that the politician enacts the policy he would have enacted in the absence of lobbying, even in cases where expected aggregate contributions increase.     

Policing domestic violence: Does officer gender matter?

This research assessed whether female officers respond to domestic violence differently from male officers. Though many studies had analyzed police responses to domestic violence since the 1980s, very few had empirically examined different types of actions, especially noncoercive actions, employed by women and men in handling domestic violence. Using data collected by a large-scale observational project, this research analyzed police supportive and control actions toward citizens involved in domestic violence. Findings showed that female officers were more likely than male officers to provide support to citizens involved in domestic violence. Female and male officers, however, did not differ significantly in exercising control actions toward citizens. Regression results from separate models for female and male officers revealed that some of the variables are predictive of police actions for one gender but not the other. Implications for policy and future research are discussed.